


Borrowed Time.

by springburn



Series: Random musings from The Capaldi character file. [6]
Category: Agatha Christie's Poirot (TV), Peter Capaldi fandom (not RPF )
Genre: F/M, Loss, Love, Peter Capaldi character file, Romance and feels, Second Chances, Spirits, remembering the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:06:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springburn/pseuds/springburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly Langton is thinking about the past......</p>
            </blockquote>





	Borrowed Time.

**Author's Note:**

> This story happens after the Agatha Christie Poirot story Wasp's Nest.  
> Starring Peter Capaldi as Claude Langton. 
> 
> Some of Molly's memories are taken directly from the tv adaptation. 
> 
> Each page that Molly turns are represented by breaks in the text.  
> Each paragraph a photograph. 
> 
> Peter was so handsome in this programme, and I've wanted to write him for ages!
> 
> Some years ago I read A Room With a View by E M Forster, it was set in the halcyon days of Edwardian England, before WWI. I always felt there was a strong possibility that Lucy Honeychurch would eventually lose her beloved George Emerson on the Western Front, and that sparked the idea for this story.

BORROWED TIME.

She settled back into the cushions.  
A shaft of sunlight played on the wall opposite, moving, slowly, inexorably, in tandem with the rhythmic ticking of the carriage clock on the table at her side.  
Time passing.  
The nurse bought in her afternoon tea, she liked it on a tray, with a crisp white cloth.  
They indulged her, because she was well off, but they thought she was batty.  
She wasn't!

Hair as white as snow now, but curled in Bobby pins, as it always was.  
Her eyes still bright, alert, and all seeing.  
Finger nails painted red, rouge on her sunken cheeks.  
In her nineties now.......but looked younger, it was all in the bone structure.  
Her gnarled and wrinkled hands reached for the photograph album, balancing her gold rimmed spectacles on the end of her nose.

She began to turn the pages slowly.

Each page a memory captured in sepia.  
Fragments of a life lead. 

Time stopped.

Reversed.

She was young again. 

oOo

1936.  
Hercules Poirot and Captain Hastings.  
Brilliant sunshine, dappled light through the sycamores, as they stepped back from the graveside, arms linked.  
"Mademoiselle Dean! Monsieur Langton! A beautiful service n'est-ce pas?"  
"Yes, Mr Poirot, a lovely send off. I'm glad everything worked out as it did. And the end came quickly. We would both like to thank you for what you did, Mr Poirot. Without you, I would be on a murder charge. Waiting to hang."  
The curious little man twirled his moustache pointedly, gave a little cough.  
"Ah! Monsieur Harrison was not a bad man, mon ami, not in his heart. I merely showed him the truth. He was a fine man, as was his father......who was my first friend when I arrived from Bruxelles, so many years ago!"  
"Well, we are indebted to you."  
"You have been given a second chance, Monsieur Langton, and those happen rarely. Make the most of them, you young people, and be happy. And now Poirot must go! Come Hastings, our train departs in fifteen minutes!"

 

oOo

John.  
Seated on the verandah.  
He was a handsome man, a delight......clever, kind, but she'd been so confused.  
She and Claude, together, were all passion, like fire and ice.  
They loved, they cooled, they drifted apart, then John happened.......Claude's dear friend.......he offered stability, comfort, security.  
It was one of her great life mistakes, agreeing to an engagement.  
Suddenly she realised.......what she was missing.  
Who she really loved, wanted, needed.  
By then, John was already ill.  
She'd loved him, but not enough, he was not Claude. 

Another page turned, her fingers smoothing the curled edges , Molly gave a slight smile. 

 

oOo

 

1937.  
There he was, sitting at a table in the garden at the Riverside Arms.  
With a pint and his newspaper.  
Smiling at the camera.  
So beautiful.  
A true aesthete.  
All chestnut hair, in luxurious curls, with lovely eyes like liquid pools of colour.  
She remembered those eyes, like it was yesterday.  
Linen jacket, jaunty neck scarf.  
A sculptor, very avant garde.  
Supremely talented.  
Those halcyon days, when the sun always seemed to be shining.

 

oOo

June 21st. Midsummer Day.  
Her wedding dress had been ivory satin.  
With lily-of-the valley in her bouquet.  
A quiet ceremony, no fuss.  
They felt they owed it to John, not to rub it in his face, even though he was gone.  
They had not forgotten he was once Claude's dearest friend, the guilt would always remain.  
Claude was so sweet that day, so full of emotion, so devoted, and so desperately in love.  
He'd worn a waistcoat, rosebud in his buttonhole, so very chic, tall and lean as he was, he reminded her of a classical Greek statue. 

oOo

 

1938.  
Travelling widely together.  
Italy.  
Milan, for the fashion week.  
Rome. Venice.  
The most exclusive photo shoots.  
Paris, lodging in the artists quarter.  
The little street cafés, the sound of an accordion playing, she could hear it now, the notes floating out through the open door and into the street.  
On the cover of Vogue, and Cosmopolitan three times, their twin suns in the ascendancy.  
He created his best works then.  
Highly acclaimed, fêted by the people that mattered most in the Art World.  
An artistic flowering, a prodigious outpouring of creativity.  
Watching him work, those elegant hands, fashioning such delicate form, such style, with flair and panache.  
Inside his studio, the light, airy room in the lovely Art Deco house, they shared, with the zig zags on the front door.  
How gloriously happy they'd been there. 

Molly's head nodded, she dozed.  
Waking again after ten minutes or so.  
Resuming her walk down memory lane, as if she hardly noticed the break. 

oOo

His very first exhibition.  
A prestigious gallery off The Mall.  
So stylish, all the great and the good were there.  
The bohemian set.  
Looking almost embarrassed at the richness of the compliments he received.  
So coy, in this image, smiling but shy.  
She was so proud of him on that opening day.  
They were the ultimate power couple, so popular.......soirée's and cocktail parties.  
Invitations to all the best events.  
Mr and Mrs Langton, whom everyone aspired to befriend.

oOo

The summer of '39.  
Punting on the river.  
They'd talked of starting a family, but she couldn't.....not just then.  
It would mean the end of her career, a model can't get fat, or saggy.  
Not yet.....wait another year.

Molly sighed, a bony forefinger tracing the line of his jaw. 

They never did have a family, it was never to be. 

A picnic, seated on a tartan rug, with sketch book and pencil.  
Caught off guard, unaware of the camera's presence.  
His tongue on his lip as he concentrated, a candid moment captured forever, by her Box Brownie. 

So blissfully unaware, so wrapped up in their lives, not realising that these were their glory days, that would soon come to an end.  
Wondrous days of laughter and light, but the sun was sinking.  
Storm clouds were looming.  
All the talk was of impending War.  
By the end of that summer, it was a reality. 

oOo

1940.  
Her hand trembled slightly as she turned the page. 

How could she ever forget that day?

Oh, but he looked so smart.  
So impossibly handsome.....  
.....and so very different, hardly her Claude at all.  
She'd seen him come up the path to the front door, barely recognised him.  
The day he joined up.  
Tall and upright in his RAF uniform.  
All his beautiful hair chopped off, short back and sides. 

Everything changed that day.

He was not a fighter, he was an artist, a lover, an architect of shape and form.  
He created life, not destroyed it.  
But flying was an art form of sorts, and when he was up there, among the clouds, he was fashioning his own spirals and swirls, with every loop and barrel roll, every vapour trail from his wingtip.  
He once told her it gave him a sense of freedom.  
Exhilarating, liberating, strapped into the tiny cockpit, just the joystick in his hand and the thrill of that Merlin engine throbbing around him. 

Molly's eyes misted, she sniffed and blew her nose on a lace handkerchief. 

oOo

1941.  
The last one she had of him, in his leather flying jacket, silk scarf, so artfully arranged.  
Effortlessly stylish.  
Standing with his co-pilot.  
He wasn't smiling, his face was set.  
Two years of strain, of constant threat, of ever present danger.

Living on borrowed time. 

Because he knew.

A dangerous reconnaissance mission.  
Their last night together, before he left, they made love for hours.  
Holding each other so close, clinging, their bodies as one.  
He wept when he reached his release, she could still feel that moment, even in the ancient husk that was now her skeletal form.  
The sensation of warmth deep inside her, the thrill and touch of his skin, his tears, wet against her face as he pressed his lips to hers desperately.  
She fervently prayed, that she might be with child after that night, held on to that forlorn hope, for the weeks that followed, to have a tangible part of him, forever with her, but it didn't transpire. 

When she received the telegram, she was completely numb. Her heart turned to ice. Never to thaw.

 _"Missing in action."_

Shot down.  
Breathed his last all alone, for all she knew.  
And she knew very little, and that was the most painful thing of all.  
Not knowing, never quite sure, where, or how or when. 

It was days before she could cry.  
No body, no grave to visit, no closure.  
Just a discontinuation.  
Snatched away, leaving a gaping hole, that she could never fill. 

oOo

1948.  
A corner of a foreign field. 

Long after the conflict was over.  
When the invading armies had been forced back, and peace returned to Europe once more.  
She visited.  
A tranquil cemetery in Normandy.  
Walking, dazed, and disconnected, among the dead, row upon row of identical white head stones.  
Each one a life lived, and lost.  
Until she found his.

But he wasn't there, not really, it was just a gesture, he was nowhere.  
Nowhere and everywhere.

Because she saw him, you see, often, just out of the corner of her eye.  
Or standing behind her when she looked in the mirror.  
In all of their most favourite haunts.  
A face in the crowd at a fashion show or at the theatre.  
She would spy his shoulders and back, that particular way he held himself, in a queue, or on the bus.  
The familiar shock of tousled brown hair, so distinctive, in the background of a photograph in the newspaper or on the television.  
Or perhaps in those brief moments just before sliding down into deep sleep, or on the edge of a dream as she resurfaced to wakefulness.  
Always just out of reach.

As the years passed, he never changed, frozen, forever young, always the same, just as he was in that last snap. 

Molly sipped her tea, it was nearly cold.  
How long had she been reminiscing?  
She closed the album, with a sigh, drew a hand across her crinkled face.

Occasionally she'd walked out with other men, but no one quite matched up.  
Claude had been the love of her life, she almost lost him once, threw in her lot with John Harrison, but they drifted back together, it was inevitable.  
They needed each other, they completed each other.  
They were like a dovetail joint.  
Interwoven.  
No other man could be that to her. Ever.  
So she filled her life with other things, to compensate.  
Started her own fashion house, prospered. Endured.  
Was happy and fulfilled in her own way.  
Now, the years had flown by, and she was alone.  
Old and infirm.  
Waiting for the tide.

oOo

"Are you quite comfortable Mrs.Langton?"  
The nurse tucked her into bed.  
"Sleep tight!"  
Switched out the light.  
Molly was tired.  
Very tired.  
Tired of this life.  
Dozing fitfully, then waking with a jolt.

"Hello, Molly!" A soft voice startled her.  
Her eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom.  
"Claude? Is that you?"  
The figure beside the bed, tall, handsome, in a leather flying jacket.  
"It's time Molly. Time to go. Are you ready?"  
"My darling Claude, you look just the same. Just as I remember you."  
"You've lived on borrowed time Molly, like I did. Now the clock has run down. So many years, pining for me. You never quite moved on, did you?"  
"No one came close Claude, dear. I did the very best I could. Continued on without you. It was hard."  
"I've always been there, Molly. In here. " He touched her chest gently. "I never really went away."  
"I've seen you so often......or I thought I did. But never as clearly as I see you now."  
"That's because I've come for you."  
He held out one of his beautiful hands, the long tapered fingers reaching towards her.  
She clasped it tight, it felt warm, vital, living flesh and bone.  
"Come Molly. Come with me."  
She rose up, almost floating, leaving the bed.  
Looking back at her own inert form, now nothing more than an empty shell, still lying there.  
"Hold on to me. Walk towards the light."  
She moved along at his side, and as she did, the long years fell away.  
Melted into forgetfulness.  
And they were Claude and Molly again, young and vibrant, together hand in hand, for all eternity.


End file.
